The Year of the Dog — Chapter 1

Narration Prompt

Summarize the chapter's narrative arc, then identify the central tension and evaluate whether the author handles it honestly.

Discussion Questions

1. The chapter embeds a parable — Grandpa's first patient — within a domestic scene of New Year's dinner. Structurally, what work does this embedded narrative perform? Consider whether it functions as moral instruction, as family mythology, or as something more complex: an argument about the relationship between generosity and self-interest that the chapter refuses to fully resolve.
2. Grace Lin presents cultural identity entirely through objects and actions: the New Year tray, the candy, the red envelopes, the food. At no point does any character articulate a theory of biculturalism. Is this restraint a strength — showing rather than telling — or does it allow the text to avoid the harder questions about what is genuinely lost and gained in cultural negotiation?

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